“Varieties of organicism – a critical analysis”

Résumé En

In earlier work I wrestled with the question of the “ontological status” oforganisms. It proved difficult to come to a clear decision, because there are manycandidates for what such a status is or would be and of course many definitions ofwhat organisms are. But what happens when we turn to theoretical projects “about”organisms that fall under the heading “organicist”? I first suggest that organicistprojects have a problem: a combination of invoking Kant, or at least a Kantian“regulative ideal,” usually presented as the epistemological component (or alternately,the complete overall vision) of a vision of organism – as instantiating naturalpurposes, as a type of “whole” distinct from a merely mechanistically specifiable setof parts, etc. – and a more ontological statement about the inherent or essential featuresof organisms, typically presented according to a combination of a “list ofheroes” or “laundry list” of properties of organisms. This amounts to a categorymistake. Other problems concern the too-strict oppositions between mechanism andorgani(ci)sm, and symmetrical tendencies to “ontologize” (thus objectifying) propertiesof organisms and to “subjectify” them (turning them into philosophies ofsubjectivity). I don’t mean to suggest that no one should be an organicist or thatKant is a name that should be banished from civilized society. Rather, to borrowawkwardly from Sade, “organicists, one more effort!” if one wants a naturalistic,non-foundationalist concept of organicism, which is indeed quite active in recenttheoretical biology, and which arguably was already alive in the organismic andeven vitalist theories of thinkers like Goldstein and Canguilhem.